Make Your Own Almond Flour

In this second phase of our Macaron process, we pick up a neat little money saving tip (who doesn’t like to save a little money, raise your hand… and send it to me). You have an urge to make macarons but have no ready source for almond flour or you’ve seen it on the store shelf and the price made you swoon.

Not to fear, you can make your own almond flour and be whipping out macarons in no time at all.

Here’s what you’ll need to make almond flour:

115g blanched almonds (whole, slices or slivers, doesn’t matter)

230g powdered sugar (confectioner’s)

A food processor and a sieve.

Note that this quantity is the amount needed to make the Macaron recipe listed here. You’ll also note that the sugar is double the almond so adjust as needed. Also, you can use whole almonds with skin if that’s all you have on hand. You’ll just have a slightly more “rustic” looking final product. The only no-no is using salted almonds. You can also roast the almonds a bit beforehand to get a nuttier flavour. Spread the almond/slivers/slices on a lined baking sheet, pop in a 275°F oven and bake for about 8 – 10 minutes or until they are nice and fragrant and a little bit golden inside.

Directions: Put all the almonds and about half the sugar (doesn’t need to be exact) in the food processor with the blade attachment. Process for about 1 minute, keeping a watchful eye so you don’t get almond butter (the sugar should help prevent this). Sift the resulting product through a standard sifter into a bowl.

Take the remaining larger chunks and put them back into the processor with the remaining sugar and give them another minute of processing. Sift again into your bowl . By this point, you should should be down to maybe a tablespoon or two of slightly coarse nut bits left. If this is all you have left and the bits aren’t too coarse, toss ’em into the main almond flour pile. If its much more, give that a third whirr.

You can also follow this same process if you want to make your macarons with different types of nut: hazelnuts, pistachio, whatever you prefer.

ProTip: Store your almonds (or any other nuts), whether ground, whole or pieces, in the refrigerator so the oils don’t start to go rancid. If you buy a fair amount when they go on sale, you can have some on hand at any time the macaron bug hits.

I can’t see any reason why this wouldn’t be applicable to most any situation. I’m sure the grinding process in commercial almond flour is slightly different but the end result is pretty much the same. The main point I might see causing a glitch is that the food processor does do better with some sugar being addd to help avoid making almond butter. If you needed the flour for something where there isn’t sugar, you could then add of the flour or other fine-grained ingredient used in the recipe.

Give it a go on a trial batch and see if you like the results for some other application. If it doesn’t turn out well enough for some other use, well, now you have an excellent reason to make macarons. Darn! 😉

hi , i am 12 years old and i love to cook .. i would really love to make macaroons but i never see almond flour at stores here in beijing .. i was very happy to see your home almond flour recepie … in my macaroon recepie the almond flour is supposed to be 125g how much gramss of almond and sugar is it going to take ? please hurry because its saturtay and i want to make it tomorrow , i wont have time in the week because of those homework -.- THANKS IN ADVANCE

Sorry about being so late to reply but we’re in the process of buying a new house and moving so my attention has been elsewhere.

When you see a recipe that calls for “almond flour” all that includes if (normally) ground up almonds. The added sugar is what this specific recipe wants along with the almond flour. So in your case, if it wants 125g of almond flour, you would grind up 125g of almonds, then add whatever other ingredients the recipe asks for.

Hope you had this figured out on your own by the time you wanted to make the macarons!